Windows Store now open to all developers in 120 markets

Today’s an especially great day to be a developer. We’re very excited to announce the last significant milestone in the rollout of the Windows Store before the general availability of Windows 8 on October 26. The Store is now open for app submissions from all developers – individuals and companies – in our supported markets, and we’ve added 82 more app submission markets! Now, developers from 120 markets can publish Windows Store apps. Ted Dworkin, Partner Program Manager for the Store, authored this post.

–Antoine

At every major Windows 8 development milestone – Release Preview, Consumer Preview, RTM – we’ve added markets toward our commitment to a truly global offering. We often hear from those who don’t yet have support in their market, and we’ve said we’ll keep expanding. Today’s 82 additional markets more than doubles our support toward enabling developer opportunity everywhere there’s a developer with desire. And as we’ve said before, we will just keep going. You can check out the complete list of supported markets on the Dev Center.

We’re also announcing a number of additional subscription program offerings that recognize and thank developers for their interest and commitment to Windows. All eligible MSDN subscribers receive a free, one-year Windows Store developer account as part of their MSDN benefits. (Eligible subscriptions include Visual Studio Professional, Test Professional, Premium, Ultimate, and BizSpark.) We have a program for students—DreamSpark—that similarly waives the subscription fee. And we have an offer for businesses in our BizSpark program, as well.

Throughout the Windows Store preview stages, we’ve seen fantastic interest from individual developers, large development houses and component and service providers. And as we’ve opened up new markets for onboarding and expanded our invitations, we’ve seen a great increase in both the number and diversity of apps—all during our preview milestones, before broad availability of the OS and before even the first production Windows 8 PC is in the market. And the Windows 8 PCs are on the way, with many unveiled recently at IFA.

If you’ve already signed up—fantastic. We’re ready for your app. Haven’t signed up yet? Getting started is easy—just go to the Windows Store Dashboard on the Windows Dev Center and sign up. The dev tools are free, the SDK is ready, and we have a ton of great supporting content to help you build your app and submit it for Store certification. Sign up now, reserve your app names—we look forward to seeing your app in the Store in time for the general availability of Windows 8.

Is there any plans to get developers early access to arm devices for testing. I already have one review that says "Slow on Arm devices". Right now my only option is to go purchase an old Netbook and buy a touch screen monitor to really debug this comment.

Trying to fill out the tax forms leads to endless cycle of: fill out form -> submit form -> redirect to a blank page on Microsoft website -> tax profile still "invalid" -> start over…

Same crap as with e-mail validation for Windows Phone dev centre – it can never be validated because clicking on link in e-mail leads you to a page that says a new e-mail was sent for validation (and indeed another e-mail arrives soon, with cycle repeating to infinity).

@FuturixTX, @Riasat: Sorry to hear about the issues you are seeing. You can contact support to get help working through the issues. Go to msdn.microsoft.com/…/hh690938 and click the link for “Help with your Developer Account”.

I’ve been going back to the Win8 Store daily and it has said there are 88 new applications now for a long time. I have to scroll through the list and try and figure out what is REALLY new and what is that which I have already seen. I have no idea where the new apps will appear at the beginning, end or scattered in the list. When I go to the list I only want to see what is new since the last time I looked.

…and if I go on holidays and come back and there have been 200 hundred new apps added… I don’t want to see just the last 100 I want to page through all since the last time I looked… I do not want to miss any.

I hope more improvements can be made… making it too simple can frustrate consumers too.

I have a Windows Phone Developer Account and am published in the marketplace. Now, as I sign up for Windows Store, my question is whether I should use the same Hotmail Email Id I have used to sign up for WP Dev Account? Assuming, sometime in future, if two stores merge what all details between the two accounts should be the same so that I am least impacted?

I paid my invidividual account and I'm trying to send my first free app, but they say than can't certificate my app because my account isn't veryfied. I send the tax forms too. I don't have idea or more information about if I need wait more time to try again to send my app. Any ideas?

Typical. I wait almost a year for the store to open and you go and open it the day after I spend all my wages I will have to wait until next week now before I can open an account. Curse you Microsoft hehe. I'm so happy the store is now open and can't wait to add my apps and I will now be checking the store every day to see what wonderful apps are available now that the store is open to all.

The signup process for a Company has a Developer and an Approver field which seems to require they be different. However, for a company with one employee (the Developer and Approver are the same), this won't work. Is there a way for companies with only a single employee (ie. a single member LLC) for liability protection reasons sign up as a Company instead of as an Individual?

Microsoft has put an age limit on who can create a dev account. You must be 18 years old to create an account. As a person who is under 18, I think that this limits much of what Microsoft could do for itself. I a currently attend a specialized tech school working with programming with Android systems and such and I would like to open myself to new possibilities considering that Windows 8 will most likely be the Microsoft OS used while I am in college. This age limit is a major annoyance to me as well as (i'm guessing) many more young developers.

The store has a clean, fresh look and the categories generally make sense but a search feature (in and across categories) would be a good idea. I realize that the App Store will be search indexed and linkable but casual users may be looking for a particular app or might not know which category to look in and might not think about exiting the store to search from the web.

One idea might be adding an "App Store" category to the "Apps", "Settings" & "Files" categories in the Windows 8 search. Since users are already used to the idea of having Internet sourced help, templates, etc., the idea that searching for Apps might include Apps available for installation as well as those already installed. Not criticizing, just saying.

India's got local store msdn.microsoft.com/…/hh694064.aspx & search engines redirect to http://www.microsoftstore.co.in and that's defunct which detriments developer registration. Having wrapped up academics for good, this time I want to venture as sole proprietor startup, & so I idealize fresh platform that Windows RT is. However, given the mislead I just mentioned, how can I take concrete step?

But, daily to go to this appdev url several times, to get the code in our mail, then go to Dashboard, see different reports, is really a pain. Badly Dev's need an API to pull our reports in a secure way. Pls do something.